19.23: Tying It All Together (A Close Reading on Worldbuilding)
Today, the gang talks about their final thoughts on Martine’s “A Memory Called Empire.” We conclude with some lessons we’ve learned through analyzing her work, and we share our favorite bits!
Thing of the Week: Pasión de las Pasiones
Homework: Find a piece of world building that you love and come up with another way to use it in your work in progress.
Close Reading Series: Texts & Timeline
Next up is Character! Starting July 7, we’ll be diving into three short stories by C.L. Clark. These are all available for free through Uncanny Magazine.
- “You Perfect Broken Thing“- Uncanny Magazine
- “Your Eyes, My Beacon: Being and Account of Several Misadventures and How I Found My Way Home” – Uncanny Magazine
- “The Cook” – Uncanny Magazine
Character: “You Perfect, Broken Thing,” “The Cook,” and “Your Eyes, My Beacon: Being an Account of Several Misadventures and How I Found My Way Home” by CL Clark (starting July 7)
And a sneak peak on the rest of the year…
Tension: Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark (starting September 1)
Structure: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (starting October 13)
Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.
Join Our Writing Community!
Powered by RedCircle
Transcript
Key Points: Recapping! Scale. Juxtaposition and recontextualization. Compression and expansion. Familiar details. Multiple scales, size, wealth, experience. Use multiple ways to convey it. Language! Constructed languages, names, how it ties to culture. Don’t forget the everyday things! Look at the original meanings of names of people you know. Consider multiple languages, also slang, class, etc. Technology and identity. Make it relatable, tie it to familiar experiences. Big questions, and looking at them from several angles. What’s normal and what’s technology? Self and tools? Double down, ask the question and dig deeper. Mix it up! Weave several tools together.
[Season 19, Episode 23]
[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.
[Season 19, Episode 23]
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[DongWon] A Close Reading on Worldbuilding. Tying It All Together.
[Erin] 15 minutes long.
[Mary Robinette] Because you’re in a hurry.
[Howard] And we’re not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I’m Mary Robinette.
[DongWon] I’m DongWon.
[Erin] I’m Erin.
[Howard] And I have no idea how we can talk about A Memory Called Empire in 15 minutes.
[Laughter]
[Howard] There are so many things that I learned just from reading this book, let alone putting together these episodes. Just from reading this book. So many things that I learned.
[Mary Robinette] That is exactly what this episode is. This episode is us going back and recapping the tools that we learned, so that you’ll have like this one spot that you can return to to refresh your memory. We’re going to start by kind of recapping the idea of scale. Like, how to use scale and what some of the concrete tools that we can use to indicate scale to a reader. We gave you a lot of really good examples during that episode, but some of the actual tools that we are using are things like juxtaposition between two elements. We saw that in A Memory Called Empire with the discussion of the vastness of the Empire compared to the smallness of Lsel. So juxtaposition is a really useful tool for indicating scale.
[Howard] I like juxtaposition and recontextualization. One of the first times I ever saw 3D used well in a movie was the animated Monsters Versus Aliens. There is a scene in which we look at the little monster, and we zoom in on each person, and then open the camera and look back and there’s this giant robot marching across the back. It communicated scale so brilliantly.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Howard] Because as the camera moves, the context changes. And changes again, and changes again, and everything gets bigger.
[DongWon] That’s the thing I talked about earlier about compression and expansion. Right? It’s this architectural concept of going in through a big space, if you compress people into a small space, and let them come back out into the big space. Right? We see that over and over again. We start broad, we condense down to Lsel Station, we condense down to Mahit,, and then we expand back out into space, and then we go back into the spaceport. Right? So, when you have somebody coming from this galactic scale and then disembarking into the gray featureless airport lobby, right, that she ends up in, that, I think, is a thing that communicates the scale of this Empire so effectively, because we’re going from that huge, broad thing to something very, very familiar. Right? So when you’re trying to communicate also very wild new concepts, giving us the familiar detail is going to help a lot, too.
[Mary Robinette] Scale is a tool that you can use, not only to indicate, like, the vastness of an empire. When you’re talking about worldbuilding, there’s a bunch of different places that you wind up using scale. Some of those are scale of wealth, and having a juxtaposition of those two things, someone who is very wealthy against someone… The poorest member of society. Those are ways to indicate kind of who some of the outer edges of the world that you’ve created are. Those are things that I think can be a lot of fun. You can also demonstrate that with the magic. You got a brand-new magic user versus the scale of someone who’s very experienced.
[Howard] The old joke about Europeans in America saying, “Oh, that’s a long drive,” and Americans in Europe saying, “Oh, wow, that’s an old castle.”
[Mary Robinette] Yes.
[DongWon] Yep. Exactly. One other thing about that is even when you’re staying within one topic within one region, talking about wealth or scale of an empire, whatever it is, is think about multiple ways to get that across. Right? Not just physical description, but the way… We talked about the opening line of the book, the way she uses disembarkation there to remind us that there is a massive amount of bureaucracy here too. Right? So when you layer in these other details, and other vectors of scale, I think that can give us a lot of extra context. So, like, in something like wealth, it’s not just contrasting the two people, but also what are the things that the wealthy person takes for granted that will indicate that in different ways.
[Erin] Exactly. You sort of took the words right out of my mouth, because I was just thinking, a lot of times, when you think about wealth, people think that it’s all about money and stuff. Which part of it is. But some of it’s about the… What you believe you can do. What you think can happen in a day? The scope of the world that it opens up for you, if you have unlimited resources, versus if you have little tiny ones. What are the ones that… What is the thing that your character is worrying about? Both people worry. Rich people worry, poor people worry, but their worries are different.
[DongWon] Exactly.
[Mary Robinette] That’s something that we saw in A Memory Called Empire, the scale of power, the difference between Mahit and her one assistant, and the Emperor and all of the people that are surrounding him, and the number… The layers of people that you had to go through, just to get an aud… To talk to him. That, again, is like scale of power can be demonstrated by multiple different means.
[Mary Robinette] So, let’s also then talk about the use of language. I suspect that will wind up talking about this a lot, because we, strangely, like language.
[Chuckles]
[DongWon] Strange, that. Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] So, this is a tool that you can use, and we talked about a number of different aspects of that tool. We talked about some of the specific language choices that she was picking.
[Howard] Some of the con lang stuff.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Howard] The long words that force us… The long unfamiliarly polysyllabic words that force us to slow down and absorb the paragraph at a different pace.
[DongWon] Taking the opportunity for something like the naming scheme, to introduce ways of developing the character. Right? The thing that is so interesting to me about how the language works is it builds the world in terms of, yes, they have these weird names in this culture, the numbers and the noun, but also some opportunity to show here’s how Mahit, an outsider, relates to the naming scheme in this world, because we have this example of the, I believe it’s 36 All-Terrain Tundra Vehicle. I always… I never quite remember the number. I hope that’s correct. But that way in assimilation works and the way cultures collide is written very clearly in how that works out.
[Erin] I also think that language, one of the great things about using names is, they’re everywhere and we use them all the time. I think something that… A trap that I’ve fallen into in the past is that you name the unusual, you name the thing in your world that is like the big weird thing, but you forget that, like, people eat every day.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] And sit every day. These are the words that actually make up most of our lives. Making changes there actually can make a greater impact on your reader then what the big thing in the sky is called.
[DongWon] Well, that’s done so effectively when she learned the word for bomb. Right? Because suddenly, this thing that wasn’t in her imagination, wasn’t in her possibility space, is a thing that she has to directly confront, and she’s laying on the ground, listening to people scream for help and then scream this other word, which she learns is bomb. Right? So, the way language also communicates what is and isn’t possible within the Empire and within Mahit’s experience of the Empire. It’s just this masterful way of gesturing at the entire scope of the world and what the stakes are in this world.
[Howard] One of the most useful tools I’ve found for opening my head to naming conventions and possibilities is looking at interpretations for original meanings of names of people I know. Then, writing them down and trying to narrate a scene with them called that. My name, Guardian Clothesmaker…
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Well, that’s a much more heroic name than Howard Tayler.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] But, still, it’s… It makes me rethink it. As you start doing this with names you’re familiar with, you’ll twig to all kinds of new possibilities for whatever it is you’re working on.
[Mary Robinette] One of the things about that that I just want to point out is that you are, basically taking your name as we know it, the sounds… Then putting it back to original meaning. What that implies is, of course, there are two languages. One of the things that I will often see people do when they’re creating worlds is that they have only one language system. Or that there is, even in that language system, that there’s only one way of speaking it. There’s no slang, there’s no class variation in it. That’s something that she hinted at, we didn’t talk much about it in the episode. But that’s something that… A tool that you can use to make your world feel more expansive is to think about the different languages that are in use, and also the power structure related to those languages.
[DongWon] Explicitly, Mahit is a foreigner to this language. This is a second language for her. Right? She’s had to learn this, and we are learning it alongside of her. One technique to really think about is when you want to do this big expansive world, this unique culture, having that audience surrogate perspective is so, so useful. Right? This is a way that she’s found to add a lot of depth to what can sometimes feel a little boring, because the audience surrogate sometimes doesn’t have enough texture to themselves. But she gives this relationship that Mahit has to the language and learning the language and the culture of this world that we can feel her presence as a full person, while still getting all of the benefits of having that outsider perspective. So that she can just sometimes stop and explain, “Hey, here’s what’s going on with the names. Hey, here’s how the language works. Hey, here’s how the culture works.”
[Howard] On the subject of outsider perspectives, I’ve got a question that I’m going to ask after our break.
[Dan] Hello. This week, are thing of the week is a role-playing game called Pasion de las Pasiones, which is based on Mexican tele-novelles. This is such a great example of how the mechanics of a role-playing game can tell a certain style of story that couldn’t be told in any other way. I… This one has such a tight focus on that soap opera style of storytelling. So, instead of having attacks you can make poor spells that you can cast, this thing has special moves like express your feelings out loud, demand what you are owed, things like that that just helps sell that idea. It’s a really great game. It’s a lot of fun. So. Once again, that is called Pasion de las Pasiones.
[Howard] So, Mahit is giving us… She’s our every person. She’s grounding us, so that we can ask questions about Teixcalaanli culture. But Mahit herself has imago technology embedded in her head. That’s weird.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] That’s weird stuff. It… On the surface, to me, it feels like, “Oh, no, you’re breaking that rule. You’re taking the audience surrogate and you’re making the audience surrogate weird.” Why, how did Arkady get away with this?
[Mary Robinette] I think by making it relatable. Because one of the things that she does, right at the beginning, is tie it to experiences that are common. The feelings of being an outsider and being grateful that she had this guide with her. So, tying that to a relatable experience, it’s like the times when I have been in another country and I have been solo versus when I have had someone with me. How much easier it is to navigate when I have someone with me. If… The idea that I could have someone with me who was supplementing my knowledge so that I didn’t look like a bumbling barbarian. Like, that would have been… Like, I would have liked that. I would still like that.
[Laughter]
[Howard] It’s like every other spy movie, where there’s a person making their way through a cocktail party, and then there’s the voice in the earpiece telling them, “Oh, that’s so and so, and this is so and so. And uh… Oh, adjust your glasses, the camera’s off.” Except the imago doesn’t need to do that part.
[DongWon] Right.
[Mary Robinette] But this does bring us around to talking about what we talked about in our third episode, which was technology and identity, and the different ways that you can use those to make your world building feel expansive and to ground the reader in different things. So, some of it is what we’re talking about is tying it to the familiar experience. But then there’s also this id… This idea of identity and where a character sits within the world that they are in.
[Howard] The asking of a big question.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Howard] One of the things that I love about genre fiction is that it asks questions that are difficult to ask outside of the genre. You still can. But, for me, one of the things that A Memory Called Empire asks is what is the line between human and nonhuman, if we’re not talking about genetics, we are talking about what’s in your head. Where is that line?
[DongWon] What is too much technology? Right?
[Howard] Yeah.
[DongWon] And what is the role of… This is a very relevant question for us these days, of what is the role of AI in our lives? Right? We all are using assistive devices in terms of our phones, in terms of our computers, to learn more, experience more, and enhance our natural knowledge of the world. How is that different from an imago, and how is that different from a cloud hook, and what’s the difference between those two things? Right? So one of the things that I love is that she’s using repetition to deepen the idea. Right? Every time she hits on this same subject, she’s coming at it from a different angle with different nuances. I kind of think of it as, Mary Robinette, your yes-but/no-and, but at a meta level. Right? She’s using that thing where she’s returning to this concept of where’s the line between what is technology and what is self. Then, every time she hits it, she’s asking a slightly different version of it, and pushing past where she took us last time. That is so cool.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Even if you don’t have something in your world that fits into this category, I think that line between what is technology and what is not technology is so interesting. Like, we’re all wearing clothes. Clothing is technology, but nobody thinks about it as technology. I have glasses. My glasses are in assistive device. Nobody thinks about them as assistive devices anymore.
[DongWon] Put a camera on it. Suddenly you’re wearing technology.
[Mary Robinette] Right. So, like, what does your character think of as technology versus what does your character think of as just normal. Like, you don’t think about your faucet as technology. Your faucet is just part of your life.
[Erin] Yeah. What is the distinction… I would say, between, like, self and tool? Where does your identity and where do the things that you use to express your identity, to move through the world, begin? That can work for both technology and for magic. So, either way, they’re something that you’re using in order to make your way through the world. What I like is that, sort of as we’ve been saying, there’s a slightly different relationship each time.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] Sometimes it’s because it’s a different person, so it’s a different identity using the same tool. Sometimes it’s because it is a different tool being used by the same person. By looking at those differences, each one gives you a different facet of understanding both the tool and the person using it.
[DongWon] Right.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Also, that person’s… Because of that person’s lens looking at that tool, like, you learn so much about them. Like, one of the scenes that I remember in Arkady’s book is when they go to the neurosurgeon and there’s a drawing of a prosthetic hand. There’s this moment where Mahit thinks, “Why is that contraband?” Because in her world, it’s not. So I think that part of the thing that you can also play with is what are the things that your character finds abhorrent about a potential technology and what are the things that they’re like, “Why is anyone surprised that we have this?”
[Howard] When you ask these questions, there’s a technique that I talk about in humor all the time that shares a name with something that you should never do on social media. Doubling down. Take the question, and keep asking it deeper and deeper and deeper. Keep digging that hole. Because… A Memory Called Empire is not the first science fiction book to talk about world cities, it’s not the first science fiction book to question humanity or our role with technology. And yet, when Arkady breaches subjects with us… Broaches those subjects with us… I don’t know which word is correct there, and I’m going to let it slide, because the salient point is, it feels fresh. She asks the questions well, and you don’t have to be conversant with all of the science fiction out there in order to do this. It helps. But you have to double down and keep asking.
[DongWon] Well, I think the magic is in the connections. Right? We’ve talked about these techniques in isolation, but she’s not just doing one of these at a time. She’s doing all of them at once. Right? That sense of compression and expansion, she’s doing as we’re also learning about the imago technology, as were also learning the language and the culture. Then we start to see how the technology intersects with our understanding of the culture through the epigraphs, through the poems, through people’s reactions to things. Right? So, language, identity, culture, physical spaces, bureaucratic spaces, all of these things, she’s interweaving in such a beautiful way. Right? So, Howard makes a great point, which is all of the things are pulled from other sources. It’s easy for me to go through and say, “Oh, this is like Anne Lackey. Oh, this is like Star Wars. Oh, this is like this or that.” You can do that with any work of fiction. The beauty of fiction is how you we’ve those things together to be their own distinct portrait. As were talking about here, being able to tie these different techniques together and switch it out from beat to beat to beat is going to be the thing that makes your fiction feel rich and exciting and fresh.
[Mary Robinette] It’s also not something that’s limited to science fiction…
[DongWon] Yes.
[Mary Robinette] Or fantasy. These kinds of things are things that you can do with a modern day thing. Someone and their relationship to their cell phone versus someone else who’s like, “Why are you attached to that device at all times?” So looking at those ways that they reveal the character, and reveal the character’s relationship to society, is something that you can do, I think, and should be doing, kind of as a tool to make things feel more expansive and grounded. I’m going to question a real quick thing that occurred to me as you were talking. Again, when you think about technology, it doesn’t have to be complicated. I was recently talking to a medievalist who talked about the introduction of the fork.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] Up to that point, everybody was like knife and spoon. When the fork got introduced, people were like, “What is this?”
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] “You’re being so hoity-toity, and this is…” There’s a woman who had her forks and she was very proud of them and she died of plague, and everybody was like, “Well, it’s because she had forks.”
[Laughter]
[DongWon] Well, also, the difference between one culture having forks and one culture having chopsticks.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] Right? The difference in how you eat, what you eat, how polite society operates, all of that is rooted in this technological device in this difference.
[Erin] I also think it’s so funny how technology, like, comes around again.
[Mary Robinette, DongWon chorus] Yeah.
[Erin] We talked about… I mean, I think we’re not going to get rid of forks, although you never know. But, thinking about…
[DongWon] The day of the fork is coming.
[Laughter]
[Erin] All rise. But I think it would be… I’m thinking about letters. Like, I’m thinking about the way that, like, letters to emails, that there was a period of time in which people would be like, “Why would you write, when you could call?” Now people say, “Why are you calling me? This could have been an email.”
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] The fact that the technology has changed, but the question between whether or not I want to read your words or hear them continues to go… Maybe it will take another iteration in another generation [garbled]
[Harward] Why are you replying to my post when all you really needed to do was click on the 100 and the thumbs up emoji.
[Laughter]
[Howard] Because that’s all you said.
[DongWon] Well, this circles back to A Memory Called Empire, because she’s imagined a world where emails are physical objects that are sealed with wax and sent around. Right? There’s such a deliberateness to that choice of… And that tells me so much about this culture, that they have email. They just think it’s crass to use. So they send each other physical memory sticks instead.
[Mary Robinette] Physical memory sticks that are encoded with poetry.
[DongWon] Yes. Exactly.
[Mary Robinette] Oh, my goodness. So, speaking of encoding. We’re going to encode a little bit of homework for you. The homework is, find a piece of worldbuilding that you love, and come up with a different way to use it in another part of your work in progress.
[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses. Now go write.
